Sicilian chef is changing Churchill’s

Tuesday

On Saturday morning, when I met Ignazio Gianfranco Munna, he was busing breakfast plates from tables in the busy Sports Zone at the Holiday Inn Executive Center.

“Let’s go some place quiet,” he said. We walked down the hall to Churchill’s. The restaurant was closed over the summer but recently reopened, serving “contemporary American” food. The menu and the name will soon change, thanks to Munna.

On Feb. 10, Churchill’s will become Churchill’s Italiano. Munna didn’t come up with the name, but he inspired the idea, when his bosses decided there was an unfilled niche for an upscale Italian restaurant in Columbia.

In November, Munna was hired as the hotel’s food and beverage director. He has since developed an Italian menu and is now training the kitchen staff. He also hired his longtime sous chef, “Vino” Lee Kirtez of St. Louis. They have worked together for 13 years. “He grew up in my hands,” Munna said. And “he knows my attitude in the kitchen.” Munna will work with Kirtez and Patrick Wilson on this Italian project.

The longtime chef is hoping his Italian dishes will draw some local traffic to the cozy 50-seat dining room.

Munna, 53, grew up in Palermo, Sicily, where he finished culinary school in 1978 and worked as a chef “for many years.” He also worked as a chef in Germany and France before returning to the seaside city of Palermo, where, he said, his mentor, “master chef Giacomo D’aleo, taught me a lot about food.”

Munna moved to Missouri in 1997 because he fell in love. He met his wife of 25 years in Italy. “She is Italian but grew up in St. Louis.” She persuaded him to make the move to the States.

“It was a big change, very traumatic,” he said. “When I came here, I didn’t know a word of English. I studied French in culinary school,” he said. The language barrier kept him from opportunities, but he caught a break when Giovanni’s On the Hill “took a chance on me.” He worked there for more than three years and then moved on, serving as executive chef at Seven Gables Inn — featuring French cuisine — for two years, then as culinary director at Shanty Creek Resort, a ski resort in Bellaire, Mich.

After four years there, Munna and his family moved back to St. Louis. “My wife didn’t like Michigan. Too cold,” he said. He designed a kitchen, trained a staff and served as executive chef for Bartolino’s Osteria in Forest Park. Then he decided to open his restaurant, Gianfranco’s Cucina, outside St. Louis in Red Bud, Ill. Two years later, in August, he sold the restaurant. The town was too small to support his upscale Italian eatery, he decided. He wanted a challenge, and he found one at the executive center.

His menu is nearly complete, and it doesn’t include either pizza or meatballs. “Italian food means a lot of different things, not just pizza and spaghetti and meatballs,” he said, smiling.

Prices will range from $7 to $32. He’ll include some lightly sauced Mediterranean fare as well as some heavier French — Tournedos a la Bordelaise — and Northern Italian-inspired dishes. Munna’s menu offers his take on some classic dishes from the Mediterranean region. Appetizer offerings include a kalamata olive tapenade hummus with sun-dried tomato pesto on toast points and an eggplant roll with pistachio cream and smoked ricotta. Among the pasta and entre dishes: veal Milanese; veal ossobuco in gremalata sauce and Milanese saffron risotto; handmade lobster ravioli; his tortellini emiliani, made with pancetta, peas, porcini mushrooms and black truffle cream sauce; and another risotto with scallops, shrimp, clams, saffron and a light tomato sauce.

His house-made desserts will include his Venetian-style tiramisu, cannoli and assorted biscotti.

“Everything will be made from scratch,” he said, adding that in Italy, the custom is to spend the entire evening enjoying a nice dinner. “You don’t rush through it.” He looked over a draft of his menu and pointed to an Italian saying: “At the table, one never gets old.” For this reason, it is a good idea to make reservations.

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